look at me
by Virg0Luck
Summary: "They are animals, now, all of them, reduced to raw screams and vivid nightmares and broken, hopeless hearts." / Voldemort's won, and it feels like the darkness will never end; but she might find comfort- maybe even love- in the last person she thought possible...DMHG.


Author's Note: Hi guys...this is the first chapter of a fic that I'm trying out. Basically, I found fan fiction and read my first DMHG on the 11th December, and I signed up on the 26th February. So between those dates, the rest of this fic will be posted! So, it won't be updated for just under a month: but I hope you enjoy the beginning.

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**Chapter One**

_He's won. He's won. It's all over, and she knows it, but she doesn't care. She's fighting. She'll kill him. For Harry, for her, for everyone. Hermione Granger doesn't give up- fuck, she doesn't, she never will- and she might be breaking inside but she can just about rasp something out of her near-useless throat, so she'll carry on. She's broken out, she's out of Azkaban; and it's full of- of perfection, out here. It's as though her world of grime and starvation and __**death **__doesn't exist._

_Harry._

_It should weaken her, should bring tears to her eyes at the thought of his death, but it strengthens her resolve; after all, she's going to take revenge, and it will be perfect. _

_Knife- where's her knife? She can't kill him without it, after all, not after her wand's been snapped and stealing one is nearly impossible. She grits her teeth, because she hates being like an animal, powerless, and her knife- it's gone. Shit, shit, shit. Shit. No- and in the rain, there's nothing, nothing to find. Her clothes are sticking to her and she knows she stands out in the otherwise perfect area but she's there, Malfoy Manor, so close to killing Voldemort-_

Her heart just about breaks when she relives her dream, again, and when she's snapped out of it her heart twists, like a knife is in there, twisting and pulling out and going in again, until her fragile heart is beyond repair, again.

She stares down at her fingers, barely recognisable through the scratches and the grime, and she looks through the thick glass at Ron.

Ron, who used to be full of life-

And Ginny, on the other side-

Are they purposely putting the people who it will break her heart to see die next to her?

Because they're all broken, now, all because Harry's-

**Gone.**

And she's not that brave girl she was in her dreams, not now that she's been broken.

So she lets herself cry, again, because a sob would be a release, but nothing comes.

She's just left there; and she edges closer to Ron's side, and he's pressed against the glass that divides them; she presses her hand to the glass, and it is cold and smooth and the only perfect thing in this hell. Through barely-open eyes, he slowly- agonizingly- slides his hand up the glass, leaving a trail of dirt that vanishes almost instantly, and she pretends for a moment that she can feel him, his warm hand, his life, his energy, through the barrier. Ron will die first, she knows, because he can't survive without Harry- but none of us can, she thinks, silently, and can't you hold on for us?

He mouths something, barely.

She can recognize it; _Hermione. _

He used to say "I love you", before this, but now "I love you" is a stupid phrase. It's weak and they don't need it, because they know.

Only people who don't know it need people to tell them they are loved.

She can't talk anymore, but she can still scream in her sleep. She wakes up choking, and the minimal amount of water they get does nothing to help. It's unsatisfying and useless and they're going to go, she knows.

Maybe she can't force herself to speak, because she can't bear the pain, not consciously; but none of them can control their dreams…

She can still hear Ron and Ginny and everyone else's nightmares.

Azkaban is different now. Thousands of Dementors still swarm them, day and night; but the bars have been replaced with glass that doesn't break. It cleans as soon as dirt touches it; and it looks alien, in this filthy place. Cleanliness doesn't belong here.

But the glass means the Dementors can't touch them through the bars, not anymore, so it's welcome.

No chances of being kissed while you're asleep.

Didn't there use to be some hint of romance, in the word **kiss**? It meant love and affection and _Ron _and life where living was worth it.

It means death, now. Life or death.

They are animals, now, all of them, reduced to raw screams and vivid nightmares and broken, hopeless hearts.

.

How many days has it been? It wasn't yesterday, she knows, but it's less than a month and more than a fortnight.

It still feels like yesterday, in the painful clarity of her memories.

She stares ahead, not really sure what she's seeing, because her vision is blurring again, bringing the cruel promise of tears; she knows that her body's long since run out of them, but she has enough for the prickle of heat in her eyes. She doesn't blink them back; in the beginning, she did, because she thought she needed to be strong.

But she refuses to be stared at like an animal in a zoo, where they laugh at her defiance and hit the glass at her stillness, wanting her to _move. _She's meant to be fire, dammit, she's meant to be-

Fuck who she's meant to be; there's no way she'll ever be that again.

She's not going to be who she wanted to be, either; she won't ever get a good job, or- Merlin forbid- have kids. She will never have kids, in this world; that would be condemning them to a life like hers, and she will never sentence her children to this.

She breathes in what oxygen she can, with her broken body, and exhales. Her warm breath fogs on the icy glass.

She tries licking her lips, but her cracked tongue does nothing. Dry. Dry.

She tries not to think about how much she craves water- oh, the perfection of the clear liquid life- but the more she tries to suppress it, the clearer the image becomes. A glass of clear, cold water, right there, if she could just reach out and grab it-

Her hand paws at empty air, and she knows she's going mad, slowly.

Food-

She regrets all their sour faces when they were camping, destroying Horcruxes, because even the meagre amount of food feels like a feast, and it's sitting there: a handful of mushrooms, a slice of bread. Water.

Her hallucinations aren't vivid, no. The vividness would be out of place, with the icy glass walls (only clear near the area where her warm breath touches them) and the grey stone floor, and the grey stone sky, because that is her sky, now; she only sees in grey walls and crimson blood, hot, sticky, and oddly captivating. It is the only colour she sees; red.

It stands out, amongst the sea of grey; grey uniform, grey walls, grey everything.

It doesn't feel like prison; it just feels like the place she's going to die.

She doesn't want to die staring at a glass of water that will never be real.

(glass.

too pristine

all she gets

is a single sip)

And it's painful and monotonous and stifling, choking, unpleasant, until she thinks she might drown.

She doesn't want to die knowing everything was in **vain**; the Horcruxes aren't destroyed, Harry is lost, and Voldemort is still _alive_.

Her skin prickles uncomfortably at the thought of him, and she's filled with a boiling, burning rage that refuses to calm and she doesn't want it to; there is a monster where her rationality used to be, thirsting for his blood, thirsting for the day he'll fall and she'll be free-

She wonders why she still has the will to live, when Ron's given up and Ginny will be falling beside him any day now.

The flap opens, and a few sips of water are in a small plastic cup. Unbreakable.

It can't be used as a weapon; she's tried, though she knew it was futile; how can paper cup cut unbreakable glass?

A slice of stale bread, too, is thrown in, with green clotting up the edges and something unpleasant growing in the middle. She grabs the goblet, and takes a sip, just one, because this is all she will get for today and tomorrow; it must be morning, now, she thinks, because she's figured out that at six hours past when the stars die, for them, when the walls close over, they are fed.

Counting stars is all she can do, these broken nights, but it brings bile to the back of her throat when she sees the constellations; it is an enchanted sky, of course, because how are Bellatrix and Draco and _everyone _she hates all together, interconnected? There is an outline outside each shape, as well, to taunt them further; and she's seen Seamus, head between his knees, rocking back and forth each night when he looks at them, unable to do anything-

Maybe the reason for the glass walls is so they will all see each other die, and it will slowly drive them insane.

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**xx**


End file.
